Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Private Smartwatch? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by ApplyingAutomation@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I'm a privacy focused individual, I run GrapheneOS on my phone & self-host as much of my tech stacks to avoid sharing info with. I'm looking for recommendations of smartwatches that align with the ideals of this community. What watch do you use? What do you recommend?

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Linux on desktop, self-hosting and GrapheneOS too.

I have a few smart watches, namely PineTime and Watchy by SQFMI but... honestly I don't wear them anymore simply because I try to be as minimalist as possible. In fact just yesterday afternoon I was wondering if I could do without GrapheneOS because I might actually NOT need a phone.

So... what do you want out of watch?

I can recommend both but honestly it depends on your need.

[–] ApplyingAutomation@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

What the goal of the watch is does seem important, Thinking about it a little bit I think these are what I'm interested in:

Telling the time
Media control
Notifications
Sleep / exercise tracking

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago

So for the PineTime the most popular firmware is https://infinitime.io/ and by default you get

Watchfaces for telling the time
Steps (displays the number of steps of the day and the daily goal)
Heart rate (controls the heart rate sensor and display current heartbeat)
Music (control the playback of the music on your phone)

and the PineTime is relatively slick, large bezel but frequently people told me, surprised if they knew me, they though I had an Apple watch, which was a brilliant moment to open up the discussion about open source, free software, open hardware.

Meanwhile Watchy has e-ink and the 3D printed frame is very bulky. It's definitely a lot more noticeable and I received few compliments for it. By default its firmware is https://github.com/sqfmi/Watchy and...

time (+ weather if connected to network, not mobile phone, via WiFi not BT)
Steps

... and that's about it. Honestly the Watchy ecosystem is a lot less lively than InfiniTime. Sure you get some different watchfaces but that's about it in terms of popular customization AFAICT. Basically I'd only recommend it if you only want a watch for time and if you are adamant about e-ink.